


In the Darkness between the Stars

by MuseofWriting



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here, Angst, Gen, Heavy Angst, Langst, literally just pure unadulterated langst, there is no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 06:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10483929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseofWriting/pseuds/MuseofWriting
Summary: What's the worst way to die?Inch by inch and day by day and hour by hour to lose yourself, until you no longer know who you are.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [@promptsforvoltron](https://promptsforvoltron.tumblr.com) published a post with a [list of Langst prompts](https://promptsforvoltron.tumblr.com/post/158656526543/langst-prompts), and an evil voice came to me and it whispered "Write all of them... in reverse order..."
> 
> This fic contains allusions to anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. Please read with caution.

_Stars are far apart, and he was lost in the darkness between them._

 

            “Look out!” he shouted, pulling Blue in a long and graceful backflip to avoid the blast of the ion canon. The other lions scattered, leaving the barrage of dangerously powerful energy to smash its way through the side of the Tynorean ship, ripping it open, exposing it to space. He heard Keith swear, and saw Red dart back towards the Galra warship, jawblade at the ready, coming up to the ion cannon from the side in hopes of dismantling it. A dozen fighter drones zipped towards him, and Hunk shouted for him to pay attention as Yellow flew into and slammed some of them off course. Green and Black were flying circles around the warship, firing off energy beams and vines in every direction. Lance pushed Blue at full throttle back towards the Tynoreans, counting seconds in his head. At fifteen seconds, a human exposed in space would lose consciousness. One to two minutes was the maximum amount of time they could survive. He’d have to pray that Tynoreans could last that long too.

            There had only been two or three Tynoreans left on the ship – the rest of the crew had already managed to ferry their one still-functioning escape pod to the Castle. As Lance pulled up to the edge of the ship, he saw one of them floating off the jagged, blasted edge. Blue caught them in her mouth gently. The escape pod pulled up beside him and he saw the other remaining Tynoreans looking anxiously through the window. He gave them a thumbs up before realizing they couldn’t see past Blue’s bright eyes, and instead just escorted them back to the Castle, narrowly out of the line of the ion canon’s fire. As he reached the hangar, he heard an explosion and Pidge whooping behind him, and glanced back to see the warship breaking into pieces. The other lions pulled up alongside him, the Paladins chattering excitedly through their play-by-play. Lance ignored them, pulling Blue inside and jumping out of the cockpit to get to the Tynorean. They were unconscious, but still breathing. Without pausing to think, Lance scooped them up in his arms and dashed upstairs to the healing pod. He set them gently inside it and stepped back, pressing the button to activate it. He breathed a sigh of relief as the readings came back: after a few dobashes of repressurization, the Tynorean would be right as rain. He smiled softly to himself.

            The other Paladins and Allura and Coran were still chattering away, and he made an effort to pull himself back to their conversation just in time to hear Hunk say, “Hey, where did Lance go? How come he vanished after that ion blast?” Lance frowned.

            “I was helping the Tynoreans, guys,” he said. “One of them got ejected into space by that blast, and Blue and I picked them up. They’re in a healing pod now.” A few moments of confused and overlapping chatter later, the rest of the Paladins had joined him in the main hall. A frightened huddle of Tynoreans followed behind Allura, practically clinging to her dress.

            “You should ask before just sticking someone in a healing pod,” Allura said.

            “Yes, one time my grandfather tried to use one for an injured Vorsklap. It _exploded_!” Coran mimed the carnage with his hands.

            “Careful not to just fly off without warning like that, Lance,” Shiro said gently. “It would have been bad if we had needed to form Voltron.” Lance stepped back slightly.

            “I… was coming back, I just—”

            “ _Sevekia_!” They all jumped at a high-pitched shriek from one of the Tynoreans, who rushed forward and pressed their nose against the healing pod. “Sevekia,” they wailed. Lance reached out and put a hand on their shoulder.

            “Hey, hey, they’re gonna be fine,” he said. “They got caught out in space after the ion cannon fired, but I got to them in time. They’ll be perfectly fine.” The Tynorean turned, their four eyes brimming with tears.

            “You… saved them?” they asked. Lance nodded, giving them his best careless grin.

            “Yep, that’s me, just doing my job as a Paladin,” he said. Abruptly, he had all the wind knocked out of him and stumbled backward. The Tynorean had leapt upward and wrapped their arms and legs around Lance’s torso in a hug so tight he could barely breathe.

            “Thank you,” they cried. “Thank you so much, kind Paladin, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

            “Hey, it’s no big deal,” Lance said, patting them awkwardly across the back. “All in a day’s work, you know.” He would never have admitted how much his heart swelled in his chest at those words, how he suddenly felt grounded and real and important. His throat burned.

            “Lance, are you _crying_?” Pidge sounded incredulous. “Dude.” Lance sniffed.

            “Are you okay?” Hunk asked. Lance sniffed again and nodded, giving the Tynorean one last pat and gently disentangling himself from their embrace. They squeezed his hand so tightly Lance thought they might break something before turning back to press their nose against the front of the healing pod again, watching Sevekia with open tenderness in their eyes.

            “I’m just happy I did something right,” he said, his voice breathy and slightly unsteady. He turned to see Hunk caught between smiling and frowning, and gave him a grin and finger-guns. “Mr. Blue Paladin, savior of the universe!” he proclaimed.

            “Good job, Lance. Just… try to check with us next time, okay? We don’t want you barreling off impulsively in the wrong direction,” Shiro said.

            “Hey, at least I didn’t fly straight into battle with the final boss when we had _absolutely no hope of beating him_ ,” Lance said pointedly. Keith folded his arms and glared.

            “Keith didn’t have very many options at the time. He knows to do it only when it’s necessary. I just don’t want you getting hurt because you fly into danger without thinking, okay?” If Lance’s smile strained just slightly at Shiro’s words, no one needed to know.

 

_Stars are far apart, and he was lost in the darkness between them_.

 

            In retrospect, getting into a prank war with Pidge was definitely a bad idea.

            He’d thought that a childhood spent contending with four siblings would give him the upper hand, but either Matt was a formidable opponent all on his own or Pidge was really an evil trickster god in disguise. He was beginning to favor the latter option. Still, this seemed to him a little beyond the pale.

            “Ha, ha, very funny, okay Pidge, you win this round.” He rolled his eyes, ignoring the bud of anxiety in his chest, and pounded on the glass with the flat of his palm. “Hey PIDGE. You got me. Congratulations and I’m sorry for hiding all the power cords in the Castle air vents. Now could you let me out?” The bud of anxiety was blooming, but he shoved it down, determined to ignore it, determined to ignore the way his hair was standing up on the back of his neck, determined to ignore the insistent memory of the last time he got stuck in an airlock, determined to ignore the voice telling him he wouldn’t be lucky enough for Keith to save him twice. He inhaled slowly, and although his breath stuttered as he let it out, he spoke evenly. “Come on, this isn’t funny anymore,” he called out. He slammed a fist against the glass slightly more forcefully than he really intended. “GUYS. Pidge! Come on, Hunk? Allura? Shiro? _Anybody_?” His heart began to pound against his ribs and he couldn’t ignore the twisting sensation in his chest anymore. What if this wasn’t a prank? What if the Castle was infected again? What if a Galra soldier had gotten on board the ship somehow and was trying to kill him? What if— What if— What if—

            “HEY!” he shouted, the word ripping at his throat. “HELP! HELP ME! LET ME OUT! HEY, IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? HELLO? I NEED HELP!” He pounded on the glass, screaming, his entire body twisted and clenched with fear. Something creaked and he grabbed the side of the door, convinced that the airlock was about to slide open behind him. He quivered, gone silent, listening so closely and intently for any other sound, any other indication that he was about to get sucked out into space, that he didn’t even blink. His eyes were wide and watering as he tried to concentrate on breathing. His fingernails scraped uselessly against the smooth metal walls, his knuckles gone white from the tension. He cleared his throat.

            “Hey!” he shouted again. “Someone, please, someone come let me out!”

            Only silence answered him. He called and called and called until his voice was hoarse and his fingers numb. It was Hunk, finally, who found him by chance, after nearly twenty minutes. He punched the button to get the airlock open and Lance stumbled out of it and fell to the floor, arms wrapped tightly around himself, feeling like he was going to shatter into a thousand pieces if he took another step. Hunk knelt down beside him, asking something, but Lance couldn’t seem to hear him or concentrate properly on his words. Eventually, Hunk just sat beside him and ran his hand across Lance’s shoulder in small circles, occasionally speaking in a low and even voice, until Pidge suddenly appeared in front of him.

            “Lance! Whoa, are you okay?” she asked, shifting her computer to one hand so she could push up her glasses.

            “He was stuck in the airlock,” Hunk explained. Pidge’s mouth went tight.

            “Yeah, that was— that was me— sorry, Lance, I wasn’t going to open it on you or anything— is he hurt?” Hunk opened his mouth to respond, but Lance shook his arm off.

            “I’m fine,” he said, hoping the hoarseness of his voice was not too obvious. “I’m not hurt. Just… don’t do that again, please?” Pidge nodded vigorously.

            “Yeah— Look, Lance, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would freak you out so much. I would never have done it if I’d known…” Lance looked up at her and saw her, worry and guilt writ across her face, and saw her lower lip tremble just slightly. He pasted a smile across his face that felt ghastly and shoved himself to his feet.

            “Don’t even worry about it,” he said, his voice just slightly too high in his own ears. “I’m fine, you just really got me!” Pidge’s face broke into a relieved smile.

            “I await your meager attempts at revenge,” she teased. Lance laughed through the spike of panic that ran up his spine. He would conveniently become too busy for that, he decided. He would never play another prank on Pidge again.

 

_Stars are far apart, and he was lost in the darkness between them_.

 

            It felt miraculous, quite frankly, that he still had all his limbs. He opened his eyes slowly to stare at Haggar, her extended finger still smoking druid magic, and patted disbelievingly at his arms and legs. He didn’t appear to have been turned into a frog or anything of the kind. He frowned up at Haggar.

            “What… uh… what was that supposed to do?” he asked.

            “You’ll see soon enough,” she spat, and vanished in a black cloud.

            “Yeah I’m still going to tell everyone where the base is, though!” he called after her. He frowned. Whatever Haggar had done, assuming it had actually worked and she wasn’t just trying to scare him, couldn’t possibly be good, but he didn’t really have time to do anything about it. He grabbed his helmet from where it had been knocked off his head, and spoke urgently into the coms.

            “Guys! Hey guys! I found something important – there’s a map to Zarkon’s newest base of operations, it’s centered around another Balmera!”

            “Shiro, we found it! We found Blue!” Pidge’s voice was ecstatic over the com.

            “What do you mean you… Guys, are you listening to me?”

            “Allura’s ready to go,” Coran’s voice said. “She’ll be with you in a tick.”

            “Finally, we’ll be able to actually form Voltron,” Keith said, sounding relieved.

            “GUYS!” Lance shouted. “Hello, I don’t know what you’re talking about but I—”

            “I’m here — where’s Blue?”

            “Why are you trying to get to my—”

            “One level up from where you are, Allura.”

            “Hello—”

            “That was the last of the fighter drones, but Hunk and I will keep circling out here just in case, until you get Blue back to the castle.” Lance abandoned speech to save his breath for running, and pounded his way through the Galra warship, reaching the hangar where he’d been forced to leave Blue when Haggar attacked him just in time to see Allura arrive. She walked up and gently put a hand on Blue’s particle barrier. It dropped away, Blue knelt down and opened her mouth and Allura climbed inside. Lance was frozen, rooted to the spot as Blue stood up and roared, yellow eyes gleaming. What was happening? Why was Allura climbing into his lion? Pidge and Keith, standing near her claw, grinned at each other and high-fived.

            “Allura’s got Blue! Keith and I will meet you two back at the castle,” Pidge said into her helmet.

            “Good work everyone,” Shiro said, sounding proud. Lance jerked out of his trance and ran up to Pidge and Keith.

            “Hey – can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” he asked. There was no response. Pidge was busy closing up some kind of gadget that Lance couldn’t have identified, Keith waiting impatiently. He waved his arms in front of their faces. “Hey, hello, Lance here, you know, the Blue Paladin? Or at least, I’m pretty sure I’m the Blue Paladin, but it kinda seems like you’re trying to replace me and I’d like to know _what’s going on, please_? Guys? Okay, seriously, is this a joke? Or did I piss you all off somehow? I know I can be annoying but this is a little extreme.” He tried to laugh, but it came out choked. “Look, if you want me off the team you could just… tell me, you know?”

            “Let’s go,” Pidge said, standing up. In desperation, Lance turned to Blue.

            “Blue, hey, hey beautiful, we’ve had some good times together, right? Remember that planet with the mermaids, we did some cool stuff there, didn’t we? Why are you… What’s going on?” Something was wrong, and a realization crept into his brain like the darkness following a sunset. He couldn’t feel a link with Blue. Whatever connection they had, whatever energy they had been sharing since Keith took them hiking into the desert was simply… absent. He moved closer, gently put a hand on her paw. “…Blue?” he asked. His voice was quiet, and uncertain, and broken. She didn’t even bother to look down. Keith and Pidge were walking away behind him. In desperation, he ran after them.

            “Guys, whatever’s happened, you still have to take me back to the castle, you wouldn’t just _leave me_ on a Galran warship, would… you… I—”

            Keith walked straight through him.

            The sensation was so strange that for a moment Lance thought he’d had a seizure. His entire body seemed to disappear from his control for a moment. The world went black, and when he could see again he had collapsed to his knees. He pressed a hand against his stomach in blind panic, clutching at his armor, at the floor, at anything he could reach.

            “Oh God, oh God, oh God oh God oh God I am dead I’m a ghost Haggar killed me and I’m a ghost oh God oh God oh _fuck_ —!” Lance’s breath came in sudden, sharp gasps as he bent over, panic swelling inside him. Keith and Pidge were getting farther away. He stumbled to his feet and ran after them, his legs too long and awkward underneath him. He just barely managed to squeeze into the cockpit with them before the hatch closed. He tried to hit one of the controls, any of them, but his hand went straight through them. He was cursing steadily under his breath, choking on his own terror, as Pidge thrust Green out into space, Allura following behind in Blue.

 

            It didn’t take him long to realize that he wasn’t just dead. It couldn’t be that simple, because everyone in the castle had completely forgotten he existed. There was no mention of him being left behind on the ship, no question about what to do with the things in his room – in fact, none of them seemed to be able to see the door into his room – and most telling, for some reason they all seemed to think they had only just found Blue for the first time, and that up until now she had been in the clutches of the Galra.

            Whether he had been entirely erased from existence, or he was dead and Haggar had cast some sort of weird memory spell on everyone as an extra layer of “fuck you,” or maybe – he could pray – he wasn’t actually dead at all but just under some kind of enchantment that made him invisible and intangible, he had no idea, and he couldn’t figure out how he was supposed to test it or do anything about it. Nothing worked. Yelling and screaming were completely useless. Whispering made no difference. For some reason floors and walls remained solid to him and he could sit on furniture, but he had no power to move anything so much as an inch to the left. He couldn’t even change back into his normal clothes, because although he could take the armor and space suit off he couldn’t touch his normal shirt and pants to put them on. No sensors in the castle picked him up. No matter what he tried, from trying to talk to people in their sleep so they would dream about him, to seeing if being a ghost had given him telepathy, none of it made the slightest difference. But the worst part was, it didn’t seem to matter.

            Allura flew Blue like she’d been born to do nothing else. The team formed Voltron without a hiccup from nearly the first try. Keith had no one to argue with and just spent his days in the training room, quiet and collected. Hunk and Pidge spent long hours talking engineering and technology over Hunk’s newest alien cooking concoction. Shiro meditated quietly and worked on his bond with Black. Coran was Coran, whistling his way through Castle maintenance, occasionally making observations to himself peppered with words Lance had always suspected he made up just to screw with the humans. The team ran like a well-oiled machine, precise and serious.

            Blue’s rejection still stung him worse than any of the others. He thought if anything in this godforsaken empty darkness of space should be able to still sense his presence, it should be the lions. But she was either completely oblivious to him, or wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him. He ached with emptiness where their connection used to be. He hadn’t realized just how comforting the presence of the lions had become, the way they had begun to feel like home and family, the warmth that lived in his chest knowing Blue was there fighting alongside him. He spent the nights curled up and sleeping on the floor beside her claw, just to be near her. During the day, as he ran out of ideas for how to get people to notice him, he grew slowly more silent and subdued until eventually he passed the time sitting in corners and on the edges of sofas, watching his old friends talk and train together. The time stretched on – for a few days, for a week, for two weeks, for a month.

 

            Something finally happened at dinner. Lance had started to avoid dinner, because while he didn’t appear to be starving, he’d felt hungry for weeks, and he couldn’t touch food, let alone eat it. So he was sitting in the main hall, staring at nothing at all, when he heard the shouting start.

            Curious, he padded up to the kitchen and stopped in the doorway, shocked to see all six of them screaming in each other’s faces. The argument had already devolved to a point where it was impossible to know what had set it off – but whatever it was, they were furious with each other. Pidge was crying, tears leaking down her cheeks, her glasses abandoned on the table. There was more than one broken plate on the floor, and food goo was smeared across everything. Shiro was red in the face. Keith looked ready to flip the table. Even Coran was in the middle of it, half his words utterly incomprehensible. Lance stared helplessly as they shrieked their way through insult after insult, as Hunk, his sweet and gentle giant, slammed his hand so hard against the edge of a plate that it broke, as Keith tried to storm out only to be forcibly stopped by Allura grabbing both his arms and shoving him backward, as Pidge climbed on top of the table and let out a shriek so high pitched that everyone stopped and clapped their hands to their ears. Then there was silence.

            “You just think about yourself!” she said, ripping her words through her tears. “You are always, always, _fucking_ thinking of _no one_ but yourself. How fucking _dare_ you. _All_ of you! None of you will take five minutes out of your day to stop and think about anything outside your own damn hero complexes. And you parade it around as if you’re so fucking selfless. Like when Keith and Allura both thought for some godfor-fucking-saken reason that just _running away_ was the right thing to do if they were the ones the Galra were tracking. Acting as if it was all noble. Acting as if that was the most selfless action in the universe. Well we nearly got everyone on Taujeer fucking _killed_ because of your ‘selflessness.’ If Red hadn’t come for Keith and we hadn’t been able to form Voltron the Taujeerans would be _dead_ by now. You weren’t thinking of _them_ , you weren’t thinking of the universe you had to save, you weren’t thinking of the rest of us, you were only thinking about yourselves. You were only thinking about how guilty and how goddamn afraid you were and how you’d rather just run away because that’s the _easy_ thing to do. Because you’re all just so. _Fucking_. Selfish.” She sat down, cross-legged, in the middle of the table, head hanging down and tears dripping slowly out of her eyes. Everyone was staring, Allura still holding on to Keith’s arms even though he had long stopped trying to get past her. Lance’s jaw was on the floor. He had never seen Pidge get so furious with their team before. He had never seen _anyone_ get so furious with their team before.

            “We… didn’t form Voltron,” Keith said quietly, frowning. “We… couldn’t have, because we didn’t… we didn’t have Blue yet…” He trailed off, chewing his lip. Pidge looked up in disbelief.

            “ _That’s_ what you’re focused on? Out of everything I just said, that’s what you’re—”

            “Wait, no, now I’m confused,” Hunk said. Lance flinched at the hoarseness in his voice. Hunk never shouted. “We had to. We lifted that ship off the planet, there’s no way that just four of the lions could have done that on their own.” Pidge whipped around to look at him.

            “Well, they did, because we couldn’t have…” Keith trailed off. “Except I feel like we _did_ …”

            “You must be mixing up your chronology, I know we had Blue because we held that damn planet together while we waited for _you two_ to get back using my vines and… freezing them…” Pidge stopped, mouth slightly open. Allura dropped Keith’s arms.

            “But you could not have been holding the planet together with Blue, because I was with Keith,” she said.

            “It must’ve been just your vines, then,” Coran said. Pidge shook her head.

            “No, that wouldn’t have been enough. That planet was acid and coming apart at the seams. My vines would have burned away in a second.”

            “But we didn’t get Blue until after we knew that Zarkon was tracking the Black Lion. Which means it was after Allura and Keith left.”

            “And I’m telling you we had to be able to form Voltron because otherwise it would have been physically impossible to lift that ship off of that planet. I held it up for almost fifteen minutes waiting for Keith to get back, I should know,” Hunk said.

            “So… did we all collectively hallucinate on Taujeer? This doesn’t make sense. Who the hell was piloting Blue?” Pidge said. There was a moment of silence, before Hunk’s eyes suddenly went wide.

            “Lance,” he gasped.

            It went through him like a shock of electricity. He felt warmth and solidity he hadn’t noticed he’d been missing rush back into his body. The entire world suddenly seemed more tangible around him. He was frozen, shell-shocked at hearing his name for the first time in a month, when Pidge looked up, saw him, and shrieked.

            “Lance!” she screamed. The whole team turned, surged towards him, and then collectively paused a couple steps away, all of their expressions warring between confusion and worry and fear and happiness.

            “How did we—?”

            “Lance, are you—?”

            “Have you been missing, or—?”

            “Did we just _forget_ Lance? For a _month_?”

            “What, _how_ —?”

            Lance, his entire body trembling, took a step forward, and they all fell silent, staring at him, staring _at him_ , actually looking at him. Very slowly, he reached out a hand, shaking so badly it was difficult to keep it straight, and grasped Hunk’s arm. When he felt solid, tangible flesh underneath it, when Hunk reached over and took his hand and held it, and looked him in the eyes, and asked him, used his name, asked him if he was alright and if he knew what had happened and apologized, over and over and over, for he didn’t even know what, Lance felt the trembling increase and spill over until his legs gave out from under him. He went to the floor, everyone dropping immediately beside him, Hunk following him down as he continued to clutch at his hand, Pidge’s feathery touch on his back, Keith crouching next to him, Shiro reaching across with his human hand to squeeze his shoulder, Allura and Coran kneeling in front of him. And he bent over, hugging Hunk’s arm to his chest, and for the first time since Haggar had hit him with her magic, he cried. He screamed and he sobbed as he clung to Hunk’s hand for dear life. All the Paladins circled around him uncertainly, their questions dying away to comfort as Lance’s sobs refused to abate, hot tears streaking down his cheeks and plopping onto his knees, soaking into Hunk’s sleeve, dripping to the floor, his throat raw from his involuntary wailing. Hunk carefully and slowly pulled him closer until he managed to get him into a one-armed hug. Lance buried his face in Hunk’s chest and he cried and he cried and he cried.

 

            Later that night, he slipped out of the main hall where they had all crashed sleepover style, and padded silently down to Blue’s hangar. He felt a tight panic in his chest that if he left he might disappear again, but he had to face Blue and he had to do it alone. Otherwise, he was afraid they might never be able to form Voltron again.

            He had felt the connection reform as soon as Hunk had said his name, nestling like a flame inside his chest, but it was weak. There was something cautious and contrite that had never been there before. He concentrated on the connection as he moved quietly through the hallways, not bothering to turn on the lights – with no ability to flip the switch himself, he had become quiet adept at navigating the castle in the dark over the past month. While he was happy beyond belief to have it back, he couldn’t set aside the image of how smoothly and happily Allura had piloted Blue while he was gone.

            The door to the hangar slid open with a near-silent hiss. He took a step inside, letting it close behind him, and then simply stood and looked at Blue. For the first time in a month, she looked back at him, and the relief threatened to choke him. Tears leaked out and rolled down his cheeks. There was a moment when he was ready to forgive the last month instantly, forget everything just for the pleasure of having Blue _see_ him again, but she stood there patiently as he rode the swell of emotion, and eventually he sat cross-legged in front of the door, not ready to come any closer yet.

            “So,” he said. He felt her listening, so he used his thumbs to rub away his tears and spoke. “I guess you also forgot I existed for a month.

            “Haggar must have pretty powerful magic if she can influence something like you. That was… that was the part that got me. Because I can’t really be mad at anyone on the team for forgetting me. It was magic, it wasn’t their fault. But you… I thought we had a connection that couldn’t be broken by something like that. I thought… I thought you were stronger than that. Stronger than her. I guess I was wrong.” He swallowed, half afraid that Blue was going to snatch him up and break him in half for saying something like that, but instead, he got a jumble of images and emotions. Fractured visions of druid magic wreaking havoc, of quintessence stolen and corrupted, of forces in the universe outside of even Voltron’s control. Guilt and sorrow bubbled under the surface. He hung his head and closed his eyes until the images faded away, and he felt Blue settling back to listen again.

            “I understand it wasn’t your fault either,” he said quietly. “But when I was… not here… I have never felt so empty as I did when I no longer had you.” So low it challenged human hearing, he thought Blue purred gently. “Trust me, Blue, I don’t want to give up being your pilot for… anything. Not even a chance to go home. But, we need to discuss Allura.” He felt the flame of connection leap in his chest, a claim of partnership, and he shook his head. “She flew you better than I do,” he said. “God knows I don’t want to give you up, but I have to think about what’s best for everyone.” He looked up and met her eyes. “I can’t be a Paladin if I’m not the best person for the job. And I know I’m already not as good as the other Paladins. So I need to know – isn’t it better that Allura is your pilot?”

            He felt vehement denial and protection surge through their link, and a vision of the fight at dinner. He frowned. “What does that mean?” he asked. There was a pause. Slowly, other images started trickling in. Blue sent him visions of families, of friends, of people laughing together and playing together and working together. Lance pushed himself to his feet and walked slowly up to her. He rested a hand on her paw and looked up. “What are you trying to tell me, girl?” he asked quietly. He closed his eyes, fingers just brushing the cool metal, and let the images wash over him.

            Understanding came slowly, in the build of the flame in his chest, in the broken mirror images that flitted through his brain, in the sensation of the metal under his fingers. Blue’s scattered effort to articulate to him what she saw in him gave him no security that she was making the right choice. He still thought that Allura could do everything he could do and far better. But he did begin to understand where Blue thought his strengths lay, and why she would not accept another Paladin if she could have him. There was a great tenderness to her thoughts, an almost motherly instinct to protect, and a sad request for his forgiveness. When he finally opened his eyes, his cheeks were wet again. Blue’s head dropped down beside him, and he hugged her nose.

            “We’ll work on it,” he promised her. “We’ll muddle our way through. Can’t drag the team down now.”

 

_Stars are far apart, and he was lost in the darkness between them._

 

            The prisoners were dead. The Galra had slaughtered them as they abandoned ship, gunning them down as they sat helpless in their cells, their bloodstained bodies left behind to mock the Paladins far too late to save them. The five of them stood motionless, arrested by the sight of the carnage. Lance took a single hesitant step forward. The floor was slick under his feet. He swallowed back bile.

            “Filthy, disgusting, inhuman, barbaric…” Keith was muttering a stream of invective, seeming unable to stop. Hunk had the back of his hand pressed over his mouth, and then abruptly turned and fled, presumably to empty his stomach. Pidge was stone-faced, her expression entirely closed off and unreadable, but there was something empty in her eyes that pained Lance. He wanted so badly to reach out to her as she turned and quietly walked out, but that emptiness stopped him. He didn’t think anyone could reach her right now.

            Shiro stepped forward, wading into the bodies as Lance and Keith watched. He knelt down beside one and gently lifted its head and shoulders, cradling them. “I knew her,” he said, his voice fragile and quiet. “She was imprisoned with me right after I lost my hand. She was kind to me.” He paused. Something terrible contorted his face. “I never knew her name,” he said. Keith, mouth set in a grim line, stepped carefully through the bodies until he reached Shiro and dropped a hand onto his shoulder.

            “It’s not your fault,” he said. Shiro shook his head.

            “I should have… I should have been able to save them. This is my failure. I should never have been the Black Paladin, I—”

            “Hey! Don’t say that,” Keith interrupted. Lance, breathing slowly out through his mouth, ignored the nausea threatening to climb up through his stomach and into his throat, and stepped out into the mass of bodies. Shiro was quiet and still, Keith trembling with anger above him, looking small and lost amid the dead. When he got close, Lance stopped and spoke.

            “Shiro, you—”

            Without warning, Keith turned and punched him in the mouth.

            Lance stumbled backward, his heel slipping on the wet floor so that he tripped and fell on top of the torn open body of a glassy-eyed alien. He raised a hand to his mouth in disbelief, tasting copper. He stared at Keith, standing above him, hands balled into fists at his side, visibly shaking.

            “Now is not the time for one of your tasteless jokes, Lance,” he hissed. “Leave him the hell alone.” Lance felt blood trickling down his chin.

            “I—” Keith bent over, grabbed the front of Lance’s armor, pulled him to his feet, and drove him back out of the room into the hall. Shiro didn’t move, didn’t even glance in their direction. Keith slammed Lance up against the wall and whispered vehemently an inch from his face. “You always say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Always! And Shiro does not need your idiocy right now. Can’t you see what these— these—” he choked on the word— “ _Galra_ have done? Show some respect and for _once_ in your life just _shut up_.” He let go and turned away, returning to Shiro, leaving Lance alone in the dark and silent hallway, with no words left even if he’d wanted to say them.

 

_Stars are far apart, and he was lost in the darkness between them_.

 

            Sometimes, the flame nestled in his chest still felt brittle, sometimes it cracked in the face of failure and self-doubt, sometimes he held on to Voltron through sheer willpower, terrified he could get his whole team killed because he didn’t know how to do this properly, any of it. Blue encouraged him in any way she could, but he could never shake the nagging feeling that he was just a fraud, here by a fluke and a misconception. So he swallowed his pride and sought advice from the best source he could think of.

            Allura was sorting through Pidge’s latest Galra finder, scanning the areas she had flagged red for distress calls or signs of Galra activity, when he walked in. She half glanced up at him but didn’t say anything, so he stood awkwardly in the doorway for a good thirty ticks before he spoke up.

            “Hey, Allura, can I talk to you?” His hands twisted themselves into knots. She nodded distractedly, tapping away at a holoscreen.

            “What is it, Lance?” she asked. She sounded exhausted. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, a white cloud of tangles and knots she hadn’t had time to brush properly in days. Lance almost turned and walked out, leaving the conversation for a better day, but he didn’t think he could stand to wait any longer. The warmth of his connection with Blue, once his greatest source of comfort in this vast emptiness of space, was now surrounded by a bubble of anxiety he couldn’t seem to pop. He wasn’t even sure what scared him more: the idea of staying the Blue Paladin when he had never deserved it, or the specter of the helpless, shattering hollowness he would feel if he lost that connection again.

            “I wanted to ask about piloting Blue,” he managed. “About you, piloting Blue, when I was… gone…” Allura pulled up a new holoscreen, not looking at him. “Um…”

            “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, still absorbed in the scrolling Altean code. “There’s no connection between us.” Lance frowned.

            “That wasn’t really what I meant…” he mumbled. “I just… I saw you piloting her, and it was like you were a natural, way better than me, and I… How did you do it? I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. How were you such a good pilot?” Allura sighed loudly.

            “I’m very busy, Lance,” she said. “Please, let it drop.” Desperate, he tried a different tack.

            “You never told me what the Blue Lion’s traits are actually supposed to be,” he said. “I interrupted you with that dumb line about—” he let out a shaky, self-deprecating laugh “—about being the handsomest, best pilot of the—” Allura exhaled loudly through her nose, effectively interrupting him, and finally turned to look at him.

            “Lance,” she said. “I’m exhausted. We all are. This really isn’t the time for your silly pick-up lines. I’m not interested. Please just leave me alone.” She turned sharply back to her holoscreen and tapped away at double speed.

            Lance felt unmoored inside his own body, unsure what he needed to do to stand or how exactly his feet worked, his tongue sitting leaden and useless inside his mouth. Still, he felt himself stumble his way out of the room, saying something polite, like “Right, of course, sorry to have bothered you,” and wondering if Allura had listened to a single word he had said.

 

_Stars are far apart, and he was lost in the darkness between them_.

 

            Lance blinked the sweat out of his eyes and readjusted his stance. “Again,” he called. “Start training sequence six!” Three gladiators rose from their downed positions and set themselves up in a tight triangle around him. He breathed in and out slowly and evenly, aiming his gun. The smooth voice of the computer announced:

            “Training sequence six: begin.”

            He whirled in a circle, blasting each target dead center with barely a blink in between. The gladiators dropped in their tracks, none of them yet within arms’ reach. “Training sequence six: defeated. Time: 4.34 ticks. Target accuracy: 98.7%” the computer announced. Lance sighed, retracting his bayard and peeling off his gloves to wipe his sweaty palms on his hip.

            “Lance?” He jumped, turning to see Hunk, still in his pajamas, standing in the doorway. He yawned. “Did I oversleep? I thought we weren’t training for another hour.” Lance shrugged.

            “I just wanted to get some early practice in,” he said. Hunk frowned looking at the downed gladiators.

            “How long have you been in here?” he asked.

            “Not long,” Lance lied. Hunk squinted at him through half-lidded eyes.

            “You’re doing that thing.”

            “What thing? I’m not doing a thing.”

            “Yes, you are, you’re doing that sideways-squinty thing you do with your eyes when you lie.”

            “There’s no thing,” he insisted.

            “Lance, come on.”

            “Okay, fine.” He sighed. “I couldn’t sleep, so I came here to train about an hour ago. Happy?” Hunk frowned at him slowly, the muscles of his face still loose and relaxed, not entirely awake yet.

            “You’re not turning into Keith on me, are you?” Lance laughed uneasily and shrugged.

            “Just a bad night, man. Let’s go get some breakfast, I know you’re not a person in the morning before you eat.”

 

            Keith’s body was a negligibly small spot of white and red almost swallowed by dark and empty sky, spinning like a top as he was sucked violently out of the airlock. A concerned chorus of his name rang through their helmets. Lance turned his lion, but Red was already on it, hurtling past him to snatch Keith up in her jaw.

            “Good kitty,” Lance heard him murmur, a note of satisfied pride in his voice. “Shiro, their ion cannon is down. We’re clear.”

            “Good job, Keith,” Shiro said, his voice warm with pride. “Alright team, let’s form Voltron!”

            “You got it!” Pidge shouted, abandoning the scattered remaining fighter drones. Hunk jumped off the top of the half-broken Robeast and flew down towards Shiro and Keith. Lance pulled at the controls to turn Blue around and—

            Nothing happened.

            He pulled at them again, and again, and again, but she didn’t respond. He was drifting, dead in the air in the middle of a battle. He started pressing anything, everything, hoping to get any kind of reaction he could, but she didn’t move.

            “No, no, no,” he whispered. “Not now. Come on, come on!”

            “Lance!” Shiro called. “What’s keeping you? That cannon won’t stay down forever!” Panic swelled in his chest. The team needed Blue, he couldn’t break down on them now. “Lance!” Shiro snapped, impatient and stressed.

            “Um,” he said, desperately trying to keep his voice steady, “I… I can’t… Blue is…” He struggled to breathe around the feeling that his lungs were made of glass. _You_ are _a part of this team. Blue chose_ you _. You can do this_. Even in his head the words sounded hollow.

            “Lance, are you okay?” Keith asked. His voice was edged with urgency.

            “Lance, what’s wrong?” Allura asked. Tears were welling in his eyes as he scrambled hopelessly to connect with the flame inside him that was his relationship with Blue, and finding nothing but cold, broken coal.

            “That Robeast is going to recover in fifteen ticks!” Coran warned. “If you don’t form Voltron right now, you might not get another chance!” Lance grabbed the controls, bit his tongue, tasted blood, and screamed. With a furious burst of willpower he threw the controls forward with so much force he thought he might break them off, and Blue jolted and stuttered back into flight, moving into place to form Voltron. The panic in his chest died away into exhausted relief, but for the rest of the battle he couldn’t stop the tears tracking down his face.

 

            “What happened out there?” Lance flinched at the sound of Shiro’s voice. He’d sat in Blue for almost an hour after they’d gotten back to the castle, his helmet off so he couldn’t hear the frenzied inquiries and reprimands assaulting him. Despite crying throughout the battle, as soon as he’d landed his eyes had gone almost painfully dry. He’d just sat there, blank and drained, staring at nothing until Blue finally nudged at him to get out. When he made his way back into the castle, wobbly with hunger and exhaustion, he moved quietly through the dark halls, stepping into corners and doorways whenever he heard someone coming, until he finally made it back into his room and managed to strip off his armor. He had just gotten his regular clothes back on when Shiro had knocked at his door.

            Now he stood, hands clenched at his sides, eyes fixed on his feet, waiting for Shiro to tear into him, but instead he was met with patient silence. Somehow that was worse.

            “I lost my connection with Blue for a moment. She wasn’t responding to me.” His voice was dull and factual. He didn’t dare look up to see Shiro’s expression. He loomed over Lance like a giant, the goal he was always reaching for but could never hope to touch, just as distant as the day Lance had seen him and the Holts waving their goodbyes to a cheering crowd before departing for the Kerberos mission. “It’s happened a few times now, just never in the heat of battle like that.”

            “How are you losing the connection? Is something wrong with Blue? Are the Galra doing something to her?” Shiro’s voice was filled with honest concern, turning Lance’s words bitter in his mouth, making him swallow back the nausea that grew in the back of his throat at the thought of confessing the truth.

            “No, Shiro,” he said. Each word cut his lips as if he were eating broken glass. “It’s not Blue. It’s me. It’s all just me.” His eyes felt hot, so he held them open to keep them dry. “It started after the… when I was… invisible for a month. I’ve had a hard time feeling the same in Blue since then, since seeing Allura pilot her. She did it better, it should be Allura in the pilot’s seat, not me.”

            “Is Blue rejecting you?” Lance squeezed his hands so hard his nails pricked his palms.

            “No!” he said. He finally looked up. “That’s the problem! She thinks I’m some amazing Paladin and I’m just _not_. I don’t deserve her.” He dropped his gaze again. “I tried talking to Allura, but she didn’t… She didn’t have anything to say that could help me.”

            “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” The honest concern was still there, flooding his voice with warmth that burned. Every word he spoke felt like an arrow in Lance’s gut. The specter of a purple-lit room strewn with bullet-riddled bodies, the floor dark with blood, rose in his mind with the taste of copper.

            “You have enough on your plate without my idiocy,” he said blankly. He felt a hand land on his shoulder and looked up, startled.

            “The Blue Lion chose you, Lance. That wasn’t an accident or a mistake. _You_ are her pilot. Not Allura, you. Really, if you can’t believe an ancient mystical creature from space when she tells you that you’re special who will you believe?” he laughed. Lance felt himself flinch under his hand, and his expression softened. “You know, you should talk to Keith,” he said. “He seems to be the closest bonded with his lion of any of us. Maybe he can help you out.”

            Lance felt small, so unbearably small and insignificant. Set against the vast treks of nothing in the universe, caught between the distant glory of shining stars, how could he ever have thought he could be important?

            “Yeah. Keith. I’ll talk to him.” The words seemed to come from someone very far away from him.

 

            “Again,” Lance said, swiping the back of his glove across his forehead. Sweat ran down his temple, tickling the edge of his ear. The bayard trembled slightly in his grip so he clenched his muscles and gritted his teeth until he stopped shaking. The computer was still talking:

            “…accuracy: 99.2—”

            “ _Again_!” he shouted, bending his knees against the protest of his screaming thighs.

            “Training sequence six: begin,” the computer said smoothly. Lance could practically shoot these gladiators in his sleep now. He pivoted expertly, firing off one shot dead center for each of them. Right as he hit the last one, he heard the door slide open behind him. Startled, he whirled around, bayard still at the ready, and nearly shot Hunk in the chest.

            The two of them stared at each other in surprise for a moment, each rooted to the spot. Lance’s bayard, still aimed at Hunk, shook just slightly. Hunk was wide-eyed, gaze fixed involuntarily on the gun, hands half-raised in instinctive surrender. . The computer spoke smoothly over them: “Training sequence six: defeated. Time: 3.98 seconds. Accuracy: 100%.”

            “Dude, Hunk said, a worried frown creasing his forehead, “you really are turning into Keith.” Lance dropped his bayard, letting it retract onto his waist, and felt himself shiver with exhaustion. He pulled his gloves off and squeezed his eyes to blink the sweat out of them.

            “So?” he asked, his voice low. “Don’t you all _want_ me to be more like Keith anyway?” He bit his lip. He hadn’t really meant to say that out loud. Hunk looked outraged.

            “What? Dude, no. What are you…” He paused, considering. “Come sit down,” he said. ‘You look like you’re about to fall on your face. When was the last time you slept properly?” Lance let himself be ushered to a bench, mainly because he was concerned Hunk was right and he wasn’t going to be able to remain upright any longer. He was silent while Hunk pushed water into his hands and made him drink it, but he could feel his friend’s distressed gaze fixed on him the whole time. He hunched hi shoulders in, waiting for the lecture. Hunk sat by him in silence for a long few minutes before it finally came.

            “We don’t want you to be Keith. We want you to be _Lance_.” Lance laughed hollowly.

            “No one wants that. Lance nearly got you all killed the other day.”

            “No, Lance nearly bit his own tongue off trying to work through whatever this is on his own because he didn’t want to bother his friends.” Hunk sighed, gripping Lance’s shoulder. “You’re funny, and optimistic, and you keep us all sane. You’re my best friend, and I like you for who you are. I like the guy who plays pranks, and misses his family, and flirts with the confidence of James Bond, and I like that you convince us all to take spa days, and make us laugh so hard I fall off my chair. In fact, I miss that guy. I feel like I haven’t seen him in a while.” Lance felt like he was going to choke.

            “I get it, I’m the comedy relief. But I have to be able to fly Blue or else I—”

            “That’s not what I—”

            They were both thrown forward off their seat as the castle lurched and shuddered underneath them. Allura’s voice crackled to life over the castle intercom, calling them to get to their lions. Lance pushed himself to his feet but Hunk caught his arm. He turned back and met his eyes, honest and open and worried.

            “You aren’t Keith, and you shouldn’t try to be,” he said. “Just… remember that, okay?” Lance looked away and shook him off.

            “Let’s go,” he said, and sprinted away before Hunk could come after him.

            He didn’t let himself pause outside of Blue, didn’t let himself hesitate, didn’t let himself contemplate the sudden panic that clawed at his throat at the thought of what might happen. He just jumped inside the cockpit and threw himself at the controls, not admitting to the relief he felt when she responded to his touch. He burst from the castle, only half-listening to the chaos on the coms, and was confronted by a storm of fire and fighter drones. He gripped the controls, feeling a grim smile twisting his lips as he shot forward into the melee, sending bursts of ice that cracked and broke apart the enemy ships. He saw the other lions in his peripheral vision, but he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t start watching them. Maybe if he just didn’t think, he’d be fine. Just like Keith, move on impulse and instinct.

            A particularly large explosion burst behind him, so forceful it sent Blue rocketing forward on a wave of fire. He heard staticky shouts through the helmet – he thought they were calling Pidge’s name – but he couldn’t stop. There were more drones in front of him, he’d just take care of those…

            Blue stalled under his hands.

            “No,” he whispered. He smacked the controls. “Come on, _please_ , come on,” he said through gritted teeth. “Not again—” She came back to life, jerking forward, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He grabbed the stick to shoot ice at the nearest fighter drone, but Blue didn’t listen to him. Instead, she was turning, going back to the rest of the team. Drones were beginning to encircle them. Lance felt panic tearing at his chest and could no longer ignore it.

            “No,” he said. “I can’t— Come on, they’ll be fine, I need to—” He yanked at the controls. Blue stuttered to a halt. “Just leave them be, they don’t need me, I can’t help them, I—”

            Lance found himself flipping head over heels through space, surrounded by darkness and fire. He was exposed and disoriented and too surprised to even panic for a moment, until the ugly realization of what had happened reared its head in the back of his brain: Blue had spit him out. He couldn’t stop tumbling long enough to get a good view of what was happening. Everything was a blur of black and red. The occasional star shone through from far away, beyond his reach, uncaring and isolated. He spun over himself once again and found himself facing Blue’s underbelly. A hesitant gloved hand began to reach towards her, but something hot and painful struck his side and the world went black.

 

_Stars are far apart, and he was lost in the darkness between them_.

 

            He came to with phantom pain still burning in his side, panic still bursting in his chest, convinced he was still stranded in the vacuum of space, stumbling out of a healing pod on legs like jelly. He fought against the half-blindness of exhaustion and disorientation to see the other Paladins with Allura and Coran huddled around a holoscreen and pointing to dots on a map.

            “…when Lance wakes up,” Allura was saying.

            “What is that, the fifth time he’s been in a healing pod?” Pidge asked.

            “Sixth, if you count the time he got trapped in one by accident!” Coran said cheerily. “He must be starting to feel quiet at home in there. He sleeps off more injuries than a blue-beaked wuzlap.” Allura laughed, while the rest of the team gave Coran their accustomed indulgently confused smiles and eye-rolls. Lance paused a few steps away, and then turned and quietly walked into the darkened halls. He was sure they’d rather make their plans without him anyway.

 

_Stars are far apart, and he was lost in the darkness between them._

 

            She knocked for five minutes without a response before she just opened the door. Pidge had her arms wrapped around her computer like a child with their favorite stuffed animal. She squinted into the dark room. Lance was lying on his side, facing the wall, staring ahead blankly, still wearing the suit from the healing pod. It had seemed like too much effort to get changed.

            “Lance?” she asked. “Are you sleeping? God, I wasn’t even sure if you were there at first. Why aren’t the lights on?” He shrugged. Sometimes he forgot these days that not everyone was used to the dark. She flicked the light switch and he squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden onslaught of brightness. “We were worried when we turned around and you were gone. At first we thought maybe you’d woken up and needed to pee or eat or something, but…” She trailed off. “Lance, are you… okay?” That question felt so fundamentally wrong that he didn’t bother to answer it. Pidge sank into a chair by his bed. “That was a stupid question, sorry. Of course you’re not okay.” She fidgeted for a moment. “But… _could_ you be okay? I… I need you to be okay.” She took a deep breath. “Look, I’m the worst friend in the universe. I should be here comforting you right now, talking you through whatever’s going on with Blue and telling you not to push yourself. But, it’s just…” Lance heard her shuffling, felt her looking away from him. “I found out where my family is. And I need your help to get them back.”

            “Allura can fly Blue,” he mumbled. Pidge took a deep breath.

            “No, she can’t.” She hesitated. “W-we… We… tried. Not because we’re trying to kick you off the team! It was only going to be a temporary, one-time thing. But we didn’t want to put that kind of stress on you so soon.” She shifted again. “But Blue refused to let her inside. I think she’s really upset. You know she scooped your back up right after she spit you out? I don’t think she wanted to actually hurt you, Lance.”

            “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his face still pressed into the sheet. “You don’t want me out there. I’m just a liability. Blue and I don’t trust each other anymore. I can’t fly her.” He paused. “I’m not the Blue Paladin,” he said. The flame in his heart was ash. He heard a small, pained sound behind him, and finally rolled onto his back and looked at Pidge. Tears were brimming in her eyes.

            “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you, Lance, I’m so so sorry. I’m sorry I have to ask you this. But, please.” She bent over, clutching the computer closer to her chest, neck bent. Tears dripped onto her knees. “Please help me save my family.” Lance closed his eyes, unable to stand the sight. He breathed slowly in and out.

            “When do we leave?” he asked.

 

            He was in full Paladin armor, his helmet tucked under his arm, standing in front of Blue. The two of them faced each other silently, blue eyes meeting yellow. Lance slowly reached a hand up. After a moment, Blue bent down and allowed him to place it on her nose.

            “For Pidge?” he asked. Their link flared warm in response.

 

            Voltron took out the guard ships around the prison just as planned, but they had to separate and go inside in order to get the prisoners out. They split up, each taking a section of the vast ship, praying none of these prisoners were actually there for a good reason. Lance blasted locks off of doors, ushering rag-clad aliens out to where escape pods could take them to the Castle. One by one they all sprinted past, eyes shining at him in gratitude. Five eyes, one eye, eyes the color of purple velvet, and then abruptly two brown eyes so like Pidge’s he almost said her name. He reached out a hand to the prisoner, who paused just slightly, long enough for him to say “Matt?” The scrawny boy skidded to a halt, coughing violently.

            “How do you know my name?” he demanded.

            “Your sister’s been looking for you,” Lance told him. He felt tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “She’s—”

            It was only the slightest glimpse of movement that caught his attention, seen out of the corner of his eye, but in a flash he had shoved Matt behind and just barely managed to catch the Galra’s gun blast on his shield. Matt was hesitating, staring wide-eyed at the three Galra converging on them. Lance gave him a one-armed shove.

            “ _Go_!” he shouted. “I’ll be fine.” Matt glanced back one last time, and then sprinted off. Lance blocked the next flurry of shots with his shield, until Matt was out sight. Then he dropped the shield and raised his bayard. Breathing evenly, he blasted each of them one after another, dead center. They dropped like flies.

            What was the old Earth saying? People never look up.

            He wouldn’t live long enough to find out if there was some kind of hatch or an air vent or what. All he knew was the searing pain as the bullet pierced through his armor, entered his shoulder clipping the edge of the collarbone, and continue to tear through his body until it ripped apart his lung and settled somewhere near the bottom of his rib cage. He didn’t really register the fall, only the fact that he was now on the ground, blood filling his mouth, unable to speak, trying and failing to gasp for air. He felt his link with Blue flare hotter than it had ever felt, burning inside him, and he knew she was coming for him, but in his head he screamed no. He screamed at her to stay back. If she came, she would have to tear apart the ship to get to him. The prisoners wouldn’t survive his rescue. He felt her pause, felt her roaring in anger and frustration, and reached out in comfort.

            _It’s okay_ , he thought. _This is okay._ His eyes drifted closed. There was still panic and chaos and alarms blaring around him, but they were all fading out of his ears. _Hey, Blue_ , he thought. _Just one last time?_

            He wasn’t in the ship anymore. He could see through Blue’s eyes, and imagine he was floating in space. The stars stretched away infinitely.

            He’d spent his childhood looking at the stars. He’d passed hours with his eye pressed to a cheap secondhand telescope, referencing a battered book of constellations. He’d logged entire nights of extra hours in the simulator, determined to reach beyond his own tiny atmosphere and get to the stars if it was the last thing he did.

            Well, he supposed he’d succeeded at that.

            He had never understood how much emptiness there was between them, though. Of course he’d seen the numbers, but until he’d been there himself, he had never really understood how much _space_ there really was, how long and how far one had to travel to get from one point of light to the next.

            Stars are far apart, and he was lost in the darkness between them. He was floating, alone and in pain, but he wasn’t afraid anymore. Heat spread through his chest, and he smiled just slightly. For the first time in a long time, he had done something worthwhile. He’d done something right. In his dying breath, he and Blue found their connection again. He would die the Blue Paladin. He could find peace in that.

            The sounding of shouting directly in his ear jolted him out of his vision through Blue. The other Paladins were shouting about something. The world was beginning to go hazy, even the pain in his chest fading into dullness, but he made an effort to concentrate, to hear their voices one last time.

            “Is everyone back at their lions?” Shiro asked.

            “I’m here.”

            “In position.”

            “Just about– okay, I’m good, I’m good.”

            “Lance?” He couldn’t speak. He was drowning in his own blood, deprived of oxygen, and his consciousness was diminishing rapidly. He wished he could tell them not to try and wait for him, but they’d figure it out soon enough. He lay quiet, wrapped in Blue’s warmth.

            “Lance, where are you?” Shiro called again, sounding impatient.

            “Come on, come on, we need to go before reinforcements arrive,” Pidge said.

            “Lance, buddy, hurry up, come on, where are you? Did you lose your helmet again?” Hunk asked, nervousness tinging his voice.

            “Can’t you even get into Blue?” Keith asked, the stress of battle evident in the edge in his voice.

            He thought his friends would probably miss him. Then again, they weren’t really losing him. The Lance they had in their heads – the prankster, the jokester, the flirt, the optimist – he had died a long time ago, in a corner somewhere, invisible and silent.

            “Lance, we’ve been calling you for ten minutes, hurry up already!”

            “Lance, this is serious. This isn’t the time for your jokes. We need to go!”

            “Lance? Lance?”

            He was slipping. Dark spots spread across his vision. His friends’ voice grew indistinct and incomprehensible in the background. He could no longer feel anything – not the pain, and not the rest of his body. The whole world faded until the only thing left was Blue’s flame, embracing him and comforting him to the last. Finally, even that winked out.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm... sorry? I don't have anything else, I'm just sorry.
> 
> If you read all of this... please go hug a puppy.
> 
> Writing the scene where Haggar's curse is broken _fucked me up_
> 
> Edit: **PLEASE TAKE NOTE THAT THERE IS NOT AND WILL NEVER BE A SEQUEL OR FOLLOW-UP TO THIS FIC** As flattered as I am by the numerous requests that I continue, I have always been firmly decided that this should stand on its own. Please do not leave comments asking me to continue, it will not change my mind. If you want more information about why I made this decision you can [check out this post here](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/161879910402/a-post-on-why-i-will-not-be-continuing-in-the)
> 
> Edit: If you DO want to read a related work that has a happy ending, check out the link below, it's fantastic!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Invisible Bonds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12344751) by [Cecilia_Dreamurr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cecilia_Dreamurr/pseuds/Cecilia_Dreamurr)




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